Essay Questions

Provide a Lacanian deconstruction of the two types of world alluded in The Seducer’s Diary.

Soren Kierkegaard explicates, “Behind the world in which we live, far in the background, lies another world, and the two have about the same relation to each other as do the stage proper and the stage one sometimes sees behind it in the theatre. Through a hanging of fine gauze, one sees, as it were, a world of gauze, lighter, more ethereal, with a quality different from that of the actual world.” “A world of gauze” is emblematic of absolute Imaginary Order which sponsors incredible imaginations; the world’s lightness is illustrative of peculiar delusions. Comparatively, “the actual world” denotes a Symbolic Order which sponsors explicit practicality.

Explicate the significance of Cordelia’s letters.

Soren Kierkegaard divulges, “From Cordelia I have received a collection of letters. Whether it is all of them, I do not know…I have copied them and shall interleave them in my fair copy. Admittedly, they are not dated, but even if they were it would not help me much, since the diary becomes more and more sparse as it proceeds. In fact, at last with only a single exception it abandons the dates altogether, as if the story in its development became so qualitatively significant that, although historically actual, it came so close to being idea that specifications of time became unimportant.” The letters are contributing to interpreting the entries in the “Seducer’s Diary”. A comparative analysis of the letters and the diary governs a reader’s interpretation of the Seducer’s psychology and his incentives. The letters are equivalent to that of footnotes; hence, they are persuasive in the deconstruction of the diary.